


apotheosis

by Rethira



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 16:12:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3453605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rethira/pseuds/Rethira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're beautiful," Egil says, and Lady Meyneth smiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	apotheosis

The first time Egil meets her, he thinks that Lady Meyneth is the most beautiful person he’s ever seen. More beautiful than his mother, grandmother, or aunt. More beautiful than any Machina he’s ever seen – more beautiful even than Mechonis. He tells Vanea; she starts crying and it’s loud enough that Lady Meyneth turns towards them. She’s so _tall_ – but she kneels down and smiles and says, “There there, little one, dry your tears,” and Vanea hiccups but stops crying.

“You’re beautiful,” Egil says, and Lady Meyneth smiles.

 

He comes to her shrine every day. If Lady Meyneth notices, she doesn’t say. She’s always kind and gentle with everyone, especially the children. Egil isn’t a child anymore, not like when he first saw her. He’s grown into his adolescent body, unlike Vanea. It’s good that she’s still a child. It means she can’t follow him everywhere, and she can’t interrupt when he’s with Lady Meyneth.

She can’t listen to everyone, but he hopes – likes to imagine – that she listens to him the most. She’s kind and gentle, and her smile is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

“You’re beautiful,” Egil says, and Lady Meyneth smiles.

 

Bionis is beautiful as well. Unlike Mechonis, the people live on Bionis’ outside, and there is _grass_ there, and _birds_ and fragile, soft things. They break at Egil’s touch, at least until he learns to be careful, and then he cradles them with all the more care for their fragility. There’s a flower that grows in the forest, in the water there. It blooms alongside great leaves, and Arglas calls it a _lotus_. Egil takes one and preserves it; a gift, for Lady Meyneth.

Her eyes light up when she sees it; “Thank you, Egil,” she says, “it’s beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful,” Egil says, and Lady Meyneth smiles.

 

Flowers from Bionis do not grow on Mechonis – Vanea says it’s sad, because flowers are such pretty, ephemeral things. She grows mechon flowers instead, and they’re beautiful in a different way. She gifts them to Lady Meyneth as well, and Lady Meyneth smiles sweetly to receive them. Egil always journeys to Bionis for his flowers – and to see Arglas of course. Arglas knows much of Bionis, can teach Egil many things; there are a wide variety of sentient species on Bionis, unlike on Mechonis. Giants and High Entia, Nopon and Homs. All so different from each other, so different from the Machina, so _different_.

He takes back little Bionis creatures for Lady Meyneth as well; she’s fond of the tiny _bunnit_ creatures, he finds, but everything he brings back is a delight for her. They only lead short lives, even when given all the care they could possibly require, but Lady Meyneth calls them all the more beautiful for it.

“You don’t have to, Egil,” she says, late one night. He’s the last one at her shrine, and she is knelt beside him, though she still towers over him. “I don’t need all these gifts.”

He meets her gaze and murmurs, “It pleases me to bring them to you,” and her expression softens.

“Thank you, Egil.”

“You’re beautiful,” Egil says, and Lady Meyneth smiles.

 

Egil works on the Mechons when he has nothing else to do. They’re an amusement, nothing more. A project; a gift, for Lady Meyneth, Vanea calls them. Everything is a gift for Lady Meyneth. The Bionis creatures don’t live long enough, and Egil hates to see Lady Meyneth weep over their fallen bodies. He will make approximations for her instead, creatures to mimic the behaviour of those Bionis creatures she enjoys. “Like my flowers,” Vanea says, the flowers he’s always dismissed, and he hates that the analogy fits.

He and Arglas talk about the world beyond Bionis and Mechonis; the world that stretches out into the blue, blue sky.

“One day we will see it with our own eyes,” Arglas says.

_One day I will show it to Lady Meyneth_ , Egil thinks, _one day I will take her out to see everything and she will walk Bionis on her own two feet and see the flowers where they grow and watch the Bionis creatures and she will still be more beautiful than anything else_.

The smile Lady Meyneth gives Egil is sweet and gentle; she laughs when he states his intention to show her the world, and says, “I would gladly go if you asked.”

When he says, “You’re beautiful,” that night, it feels as if he’s trying to say something else entirely.

 

Arglas takes up the Monado and Agni Ratha falls.

 

He visits her shrine every day. Her eyes are closed, her beautiful face still. At first, he can hardly believe it. But days turn into months, and months turn to years, and years turn to _centuries_.

And Lady Meyneth does not move.

His anger grows.

 

It’s sickening. Vile. A perversion of the worst sort.

Lady Meyneth, trapped in _that body_.

A Hom. Face Nemesis, it had been, before they’d changed it. Before he’d known Lady Meyneth had thrown her old body away.

The words _you’re beautiful_ turn to ash in his mouth, and he closes his eyes and covers his ears to her words.

 

She’s beautiful at the last. Her eyes – “Create a world without the need for gods,” she says, and he wants to cry out _how? how can I without_ you _?_

Her Monado falls, and he reaches to grasp it – she meant it for him, she meant it for _him_ – but Zanza-

Always it is Zanza. He’s stolen _everything_. Everything that Egil has ever loved.

 

_you were all I wanted_ , Egil thinks, in the seconds before death

_you were all I_ ever _wanted, Meyneth_


End file.
